My Device
by Yuan18
Summary: After all he’s endured; the chance to take a little control isn’t something Kakyou is about to pass up.


Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the world from whence they came.

Author's note: Spoilers for X9 and X15. In X9 when Fuuma extended his hand to Kakyou, I thought that perhaps Kakyou saw something more in his offer than just the chance for his Wish to be granted. Feedback is always appreciated.

My Device

By Yuan

He is staring down at me with eyes colder than my barely living body. After a heartbeat, he speaks.

"What is your name?'

It's a perfectly natural question. But to someone who has been locked up as long as I have, it is merely a reminder of how isolated I truly am.

I'm sure even my guards don't remember my name.

Of course, among the living, there are definitely two people who do. I say "definitely" because they've given me no reason to doubt they'd remember exactly who is draining them with medical and hotel bills.

I'm surprised they haven't unplugged me yet.

I shouldn't be, I suppose. Why give up the treasure that made them rich and influential? They'd gained so much with me as their bargaining tool and blackmail letter. Now all they had to do was explain to their now-colleagues why their own personal prophet was unable to tell fortunes anymore. Being such slick-minded, morally void politicians they are, they probably found something to appease their patrons. I'm not dead, I'm just traveling, or in deep meditation, or heightening my powers as a Seer. I'll come back and tell them which way their career is headed, who is plotting against them and what political group is to going to be the most powerful for the next decade or two. Don't worry, I'll be back.

After eight years, I wonder if the politicians still believe them. Wonder if they donate to my life support like a fundraiser in hope that by some miracle I'll wake up and divine for them again as if nothing had ever happened.

Eight years is a long time.

Most likely, those two are using their own money to keep me alive. Selling the abilities of one's Dreamseeing son makes for phenomenal wages.

………………

The lights were always dim when a customer came. A few small candles were lit and placed in each corner. They hardly made it possible to read the kanji on the scrolls that adorned the walls, but I could have read them if asked. I could have told them exactly how gentle the curves were on the character "beauty" on the scroll nearest the window and just how uneven the lines on the character for "life" was in the scroll furthest from the door.

Life. Mine consisted of sitting, reading whatever I could get my hands on and fortune telling. Instead of playing with children my own age, I was surrounded by grown men and women who insisted on calling me 'Kakyou-sama.'

'Kakyou-sama.' They could have done without. It was a mere formality emphasizing the respect that none of them gave me. They'd sit down and I'd spread my small hands and close my eyes. I didn't need to do this to use my power, but my parents had me do it because it made me look "authentic." To this end, they also made me wear yukatas made of the finest silks and never cut my hair too short so I would look "beautifully mysterious."

I thought I looked strange, but as a ten-year-old sheltered to the extreme, I lacked the worldly experience to be the best judge.

After I told them what I saw, they would leave and I'd be alone again. If I pressed myself against the sliding door I was never let outside of, I could hear some maids or my parents talking in gleeful voices about how successful the "business exchange" went.

Occasionally they'd come into the room to congratulate me on paying the bills for the next few years or so, but mostly they sent the servants in with books or other reading materials. My salary.

I'd never known anything else, so I never thought to ask for more. I'd immerse myself in my books, reading legends, almanacs, dictionaries, history books, encyclopedias, art collections, crystal lore…

They were my only glimpses of a world I'd never touch.

………………

If I'd only kept my mouth shut, my waking life might have been a little less constrained.

"Kakyou-sama, you're by the window again."

"Yes. The sky's lovely, isn't it? It must be a beautiful day outside."

That's all it took. The next day, strong, thick wires twisted into a continual honeycomb pattern were installed in the window behind slender pillars of wood. Stunned, I could only watch. Later, I was told they were put up because the room "could use a little decoration."

Decoration? Decoration was for enhancing beauty. These fancy jail bars did nothing but distort gentle sky and the dreamy clouds drifting across its surface.

It was then, perhaps, that I consciously realized what I was to them. To all of them. I was something they didn't want to lose or be stolen. Or to escape them. I was a possession. I was a tool.

I looked out the window, an ache slowly building in my chest. Maybe, just maybe, I could remove the wires for a few minutes a day without anyone knowing. Just a few minutes, so I could see the sky, wide and open and blue.

I raised a hand and touched the wires. They were cold and mercilessly unyielding. There was no way I could remove and replace them without anyone finding out and even if there was, I lacked the equipment to do it. I certainly couldn't remove them with my bare hands.

I slumped wearily, my hands twisting the silk of my yukata. In a burst of angry rebelliousness, I wrapped my hands around the bars and pulled myself forward until my elbows were resting on the windowsill. I was going to look at outside anyway, whether they wanted me near the window or not.

My eyes scanned the sky, but I could only take so much of the ruined view before I had to look away. My gaze shifted downward and I started.

Ever since my powers made me valuable to my parents, I've had guards. They constantly roamed around my little tower of the main house, looking like nothing more than large black insects jealously guarding their nest. However, when I saw them today, every one of their faces was looking right at me. Waiting to see how I would react, if I'd try to tamper with them just as I'd been fantasizing a minute ago…

I pushed away from the windowsill as if I'd been stung, and wrapped my arms around my knees. I rested my forehead against the smooth, cool silk that covered them and squeezed my eyes shut. Slowing my breathing down and letting my mind become blank, I felt sleep trickle over me like water.

It's hard to say to whom my dreams were most valuable; the men and women who planned their careers around them, or the thirteen-year-old boy who found reprieve from his prison through them.

………………

Cat's eyes, deep and golden and shimmering with the power that draws flashes of the future into my mind. They come alive every time I scry my dreams for prophetic visions. They have brought wealth, security, and power to those who have utilized my foresight to their utmost advantage.

Hokuto never saw these eyes.

Not once, in all the dreams we shared together, had she asked me to tell her of the future. Of course, it wouldn't have been like a simple palm reading or complicated astrological equation. There would have been no lies and no uncertainties in a vision I could have divined for her. I could have told her anything, anything at all, with the best reassurances that everything would be true.

And she never asked me for any of it, not even a casual inquiry about tomorrow's weather.

It wasn't that she didn't know what I was. In fact, she guessed what I could do before I explained it to her. She told me that her family was more than familiar with magic like my own, and had been for centuries. But even knowing I could show to her anything she ever wanted to know about her future, she never once asked me to look into it.

So I never tried.

Of course, all dreams touch, and there are some things I can't see help seeing. I could barely believe my eyes when I saw her in bloodstained robes at the feet of a black-clad man under a curiously sinister cherry tree in full bloom. I didn't know what was going on. It was foolish and incredibly naïve; but I didn't want to know. Instead, I wanted to believe.

Hokuto was a believer. She believed in her twin brother, she believed in herself, she believed that anything was possible. And she believed in me. For all my faults, she believed in the person I was and encouraged me to believe in the self-worth I never knew existed beyond how valuable my power was.

So I wanted to believe in her. I wanted believe that no matter how many of my visions had come true in the past (which was all of them), there were people in this world who could prove me wrong. And I thought that if no one else, she could. Surely someone so strong and free of limits wouldn't be controlled by the chains of fate.

For a while, it seemed like everything would be fine. I steadfastly avoided trying to scry for more information and I never saw any more of her future than that single, terrifying moment when her body fell to a ground carpeted in the petals of sakura blossoms. Instead she showed me the ocean, her beautiful smile and a taste of the freedom I had longed so much for.

But for all my hope, for all my yearning, one night I couldn't find her in any dream but the one that showed the reality of the present. And though I knew it was a vision of mine and I was never wrong where the future was concerned, all of that ceased to matter the moment I saw her in those robes, facing that man, standing under that tree.

I ran. I can't test the theory of course, but I'm certain that even if I had years of regular exercise, I couldn't have run faster than I did at that moment. Before I knew it I was off the mat, through the door, and down the stairs. I burst through the side doors that led to the courtyard, and to this day, I'm amazed at how oblivious I was to everything except that single crisis.

For the first time since I could remember, there weren't any walls around me. I was outside of my room, but I didn't react to it as I always imagined I would. I didn't savor the cool, fresh air like an expensive drink. I didn't raise my eyes to the sky and turn slowly for hours to try and see the stars from all angles. I didn't touch the trees simply because they were trees and the closest I'd ever been to a tree was when I'd traced their outline in books. I didn't hear the yells of my guards behind me, I didn't hear the gunshot, and the only pain I felt when the bullet pierced my body was the agony of grief as I saw Hokuto's blood pour out through her back.

As I lay on the ground, my black-clad guards yelling in alarm, I felt my vision drift in and out of focus. I couldn't comprehend why my arm wouldn't move, why I couldn't just stand, start running again, and through some inexplicable miracle, find my dream just a false alarm and Hokuto alive and cheerful as ever.

The world faded out of view, leaving only blackness. As my sight died, so did my hope, for all I could see now was the brutal reality of my dream. The bullet that hit me was the key that locked the door to the prison of my mind. I couldn't regain consciousness and I would never escape this one terrible, aching moment.

The moment I lost the person who was not just my only friend, but the girl I loved, and the first person who had seen me not as a tool or an asset, but as a human being.

………………

I could have let her fall. I could have let her sink into the darkness of her despair and let her mind shut down completely. I could have done this and be doing her a mercy. After all, I know firsthand how painful the life of a Dreamseer is.

But I pulled her back up. All I knew was that I just couldn't let her perish like that. I didn't want anyone else to die because I didn't take action. I pulled Kotori up and brought her into my dream.

The girl was a Dreamseer. I had Seen a long time ago that I would meet her, a girl with beautiful eyes and the same power as mine, but inexperienced as a Dreamseer. She had seen glimpses of the future in her sleep, but had not realized how truly powerful she was. She may have been able to surpass me.

I pitied her. It's not a gift to see the future.

I brought her to the dream of the ocean Hokuto showed me. It seemed fitting, as I had spent so much time with someone else from the "outside" on those shores. For the first time in years, I was able to speak to another human being again. And again, I knew that person was going to die.

This time, though, I didn't ignore it. I no longer hid from inevitability like an idiot and a coward. However, I didn't tell Kotori of her death, because I knew there was nothing either of us could do to change it. Destiny had taught me its lesson well.

The young girl asked me if I was lonely, and I told her a dead heart feels nothing. She persisted, asking if I missed anybody. When I told her I would never be able to see that person again, she cried and hugged me.

And touched the wound that never stopped bleeding.

"Love." She said that word with tears in her eyes, and I knew that her true intuition extended far beyond the powers she'd been given as a Dreamseer.

I gently turned the conversation toward the destiny she was involved in. Thrown so suddenly into such a fate without any knowledge it's magnitude…it was appalling. Though it might not have done her any good, I gave her a warning about Nakano. It was perhaps the first unsolicited scrying I had ever done without expecting compensation.

I sent her off with a pair of crystal wings and assured her we'd meet again. As she flew into the sky that was the portal out of my dream, I felt a fierce ache in my chest that could only have been a wish to do the same.

………………

"This girl does not wish for Kamui's death."

I hadn't realized it could be done, but Kotori did. She knew my power in dreams was greater than hers, put two and two together, and asked me to do something I had never dreamed of.

I had never entered a dream after death before. Magicians can utilize their powers to ensure their spirit lingers for just a little while longer to say farewell or take care of unfinished business if need be. Kotori, as a Dreamseer, could linger in her mind. But though she could do this, she couldn't reconnect her consciousness to her body without the help of a more experienced Dreamseer. Namely, me.

She had asked me to do it. She had _/asked/_ me. The boy she loved was in danger, and she knew she could prevent it with my help, but she didn't demand my assistance. Although the situation was tense and dire, and it would have been understandable if she did, she didn't try to bribe me or command me like others had. She had simply asked me, one person to another.

I did it, of course. There was no way I could save her from her fate, but I could do this one last thing for her. Kamui of the Dragons of Earth saw me through her eyes and I knew my own destiny was taking the turn I had Seen so long ago.

Back in Kotori's death dream, I apologized for not being able to save her. There was nothing I could have done. I knew that, and she knew it too. After all, it was the path she had chosen, and no one had the right to change it but her. But for all my experiences with fate, I couldn't help feeling guilt and regret. A heart as kind as hers shouldn't have had to stop beating so early. However, to my utter surprise, she shook her head and told me that in helping her save Kamui, I had done more than enough.

With a beautiful smile on her face, she thanked me. It was the first time anyone had thanked me for my services.

She gave me one last message to deliver to the two Kamuis as a favor to her before soaring into the sky. And in this message, she gave me hope.

"The future has yet to be decided."

………………

After the Hokuto's death, I had firmly believed that the future was something nobody could ever change. But if what Kotori said is true…then maybe I'm not as powerless as I think.

And perhaps that is one of the reasons why when Kamui of the Dragons of Earth ripped my illusion apart as easily as if it was paper, I felt the first spark of hope in my endlessly empty heart in a long time.

Ordinarily I would have been resigned. Of course I was going to become a Dragon of Earth and the guide of Kamui; I had Seen it already. It would have been just another confirmation among the millions I had endured that fate is set in stone.

But to me, who's been a tool for so long, it's no longer that simple.

The hand he now holds out to me is not only what I had predicted a long time ago, it's the offer of a payment that will fulfill my deepest desire. Once again I am in a business transaction. But unlike the others, where I had little freedom to do otherwise, this potential employer is offering me a choice. He has more than enough power to coerce me into his service this very moment, but instead, he is going to let me make my own decision. And if I decide not to accept, his relaxed demeanor implies that he will not force me. I marvel at how extraordinary the situation seems to me.

Kamui is waiting.

This is a choice, a choice that will fulfill the fate I had foreseen in my dreams, but a choice nonetheless. If I agree to this arrangement, instead of merely going along with my destiny, it will also be the first time I can finally point my future in the direction I want.

I reach out and place my hand in his.


End file.
